1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to thermally insulated food delivery boxes for transporting hot or cold food, and more particularly pertains to a reusable food delivery box and method for delivering temperature controlled food to the consumer such as hot pizza.
2. Description of Related Art
The use of corrugated containers for the home delivery of hot food and in particular pizza is well known in the prior art. Heretofore, however, the prior art has failed to provide a reusable pizza box for home delivery that could be returned, sanitized, and reused thereby saving a great deal of money and paper and providing a more ecologically beneficial method of delivering pizza. Conventionally pizza boxes are constructed of a fiberboard material in the form of flat blanks having scored sections to form folded over panels used to shape the sides and top of the box. U S. Pat. No. 4,009,821, entitled "Hot -Food Transporting Box" by Thomas P. Hambleton, discloses a typical hot food delivery container incorporating a particular laminated construction of a fiberboard box formed from a blank to provide containment of heat there within, but fails to set forth a reusable container as set forth by the present invention.
A reusable container is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,886,179, entitled "Reusable container for a piece of pizza pie or other food product", by William T. Volk, which issued Dec. 12, 1989. The Volk patent describes a complicated and expensive thermoplastic interlockable container shaped in the general shape of a slice of pizza, such a device is not suitable for home delivery of pizza nor for use in a restaurant.
A corrugated plastic material of the generally preferred type in the present invention is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,286,006, entitled "Corrugated Material" by Lester B. Boelter, which issued Aug. 25, 1981. Disclosed, in the discussion of the prior art, is corrugated board constructed from plastic and appropriate adhesives. One such board is a fluted double faced sheet extruded from thermoplastic and resembling corrugated fiberboard which is commercially called PRIME COR-X.TM. sheet and is manufactured by Primex Corporation of Oakland New Jersey. However, though the material may used in the present invention, the patent teaches to use the material for disposable items and away from the present invention of a reusable food delivery box.